Nigerian society and political behavior at all levels usually is shaped by patronage and clientage networks. Politically, there are few genuinely independent voters, in the sense that voters in, say, Vermont or Switzerland are completely free to vote for whomever they like. Clients usually vote as their patrons wish, and nearly everybody is both a patron and a client, from the top of society to rag pickers at the Lagos dump. 

Rob Sheldon is a 2013-2014 Mansfield Fellow based in Tokyo. Follow him at @shorttelegrams. Also see Part II and Part III of this series. After several years of incremental improvements, Washington a…

Somehow, FISA has become a four-letter word. In the first part of a two-part series on the current debates surrounding the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, former General Counsel of the Nationa…

Recurrent deadly encounters between soldiers and civilians across West Africa offer an instructive glimpse into the state of civil-military relations in the region.

Charles Dunst is a journalist based in Phnom Penh. He was written for the New York Times, the Atlantic, the Washington Post, the South China Morning Post, and the American Prospect, among other publi…